What concerns me here is that Thomas might be opposed because “he does not speak for the majority of blacks.” I am reminded of the time when some NAACP chapters led a campaign against the film “The Color Purple” because it did not “represent the black experience.”
The movie was picketed at the box office, blasted in the press and passed over at the Academy Awards largely because some blacks decided this was not an acceptable portrayal of black life. Who were the losers? Alice Walker, who wrote the probing and compelling novel; the movie’s outstanding cast, led by Danny Glover, Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey and Margaret Avery; and Steven Spielberg, the film’s producer-director.
But the biggest loser was the black community, because we denied our own the chance to be honored for their artistic achievements. And why? Because we could not allow a fictional work to be judged as fiction. We had to judge it as a historical treatise.
I wonder what would have happened to “The Godfather” if the Italian-American Civil Rights League, which had objected to some aspects of the film, had opposed its nomination for the Academy Awards because it “did not represent the Italian experience.” “The Godfather,” with its three Oscars, is remembered as one of the great movies of recent decades. “The Color Purple,” with 11 nominations and no Oscars, has been pushed aside as a “controversial film.”
The reaction to Clarence Thomas’s nomination to the Supreme Court is analogous to what happened to “The Color Purple.” Of course, the two situations differ in substance, importance and impact. But in both cases, there is a presumption that there can be only one valid interpretation of the African-American experience. More than anyone, we should understand the potential value of a minority point of view.
Thomas may not speak for the majority of black people, but his voice, his views and his experiences are those of many African-Americans who “came up the hard way.” This is not to say that everyone who grew up poor ends up a conservative. I was born in Florida to a teenage mother who picked beans, scrubbed floors and worked in a dry cleaner most of her life to send four children to college. My grandparents’ home, where we grew up, had no plumbing or electricity until the house was literally moved into town from the countryside. Before that, we used an outhouse, drew water from a well, bathed in a tin tub in the kitchen and lit the house with kerosene lamps. That was not uncommon in the rural South in the mid ’40s and ’50s.
I do not share Thomas’s political views, but they are the views of many people who grew up with me. Liberals need to listen and learn from conservatives, just as conservatives can learn from liberals.
Many complex experiences made Clarence Thomas a conservative. His way may not be our way, but that does not mean it cannot produce results. His ambivalence toward affirmative action, for example, could lead to a search for an alternative approach to providing equality for African-American and others.
Those of use who went to college in the ’50s, before there was affirmative action, welcomed this federal initiative of the ’60s as a means of helping deserving black students at The University of Michigan resenting the notion that they did not make it to college on their own merit. They suffered slurs and innuendoes from faculty as well as other students. Although they appreciated the opportunity for an education, they felt there had to be a better way of opening the door. I would guess that today many of them have mixed feelings, if not wholly negative feelings, about affirmative action.
Those of us in my generation who entered college without affirmative action should stop and think about how much pride we take in that fact that “we made it on our own” (although we too had help), and how much that affects our own sense of self-worth.
As African-Americans, we have always fought for access to America’s institutions of power and influence. We demanded representation regardless of who was sitting at the table. When we raised our clenched fists in the cry for “black power,” I don’t think we meant power for black liberals only. Thomas should not be barred from serving on the Supreme Court because he does not speak for the liberal black leadership or what we think is the majority of black people. The fact that he speaks for many blacks, including a growing number of black leaders, should carry some weight.
We know that with or without Thomas, this conservative Supreme Court will no longer interpret civil and individual rights as the court has done over the last three and a half decades. Thomas’s background and experience could make him a moderating influence and a distinctive voice among his conservative peers. His appointment would represent a personal triumph over poverty and racial discrimination. Many in our community would see his success as a victory for us. As African-Americans, we can live with Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court. Let this not be a repeat of “The Color Purple” episode, where we all end up losers.
